Every day brings new horrors

Menu

Day #94: Treehouse (2014)

When Killian and his brother Crawford go into the woods to meet up with some other teens, the last thing they expect is to find Elizabeth, who went missing with her little brother. When Crawford leaves to get help, Killian and Elizabeth find themselves being stalked, and must fight for their lives.

My take:

Warning: this review is going to swing between two extremes at the drop of a dime.

SO.

Despite having some pacing issues in the second act, almost everything else about this movie was pretty spot on. It looked and felt like a high quality production; the story, while generally pretty linear, was interesting enough to keep me engaged; and the cast was not only decent acting-wise, but managed to look like everyday people rather than a collection of glamorous star/lets cashing a cheque while waiting for their big Hollywood break (a.k.a. the kind of cast that usually shows up in these movies).

The relationships between the characters were actually developed in a way that made them believable, too. Not because a lot of time was spent on character development, necessarily – but moreso because there was some really tight scripting throughout most of the movie. Sure, there was some stumbling here and there, but for the most part it flowed pretty nicely.

I also liked the emphasis on suspense rather than gore. This is not the kind of movie where there’s a lot of running and screaming as people get chopped up. In fact, while it actually does have a relatively high body count, there a long spans of time where nothing is really happening except the ratcheting up of tension. I liked this, and it ultimately felt like it paid off, too.

All of these positive feelings are why the last, hmm…one or two minutes of the movie, really annoyed me. Not enough for me to disavow the good that the rest of the movie achieved, thankfully, but, ugh. Even though I could accept the course of action that was taken by the characters (and even felt like it was appropriate), in terms of the character dynamics/interactions, it was so tonally off that I found myself thinking, “Why would you do that?!” It was unnecessary and, frankly, bloody stupid.

But, uh, yeah. I liked Treehouse, for the most part. I just wish it had either been handled better at the end, or cut off a bit earlier.